I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. – C.S. Lewis

“By it I see everything else.” The risen and rising sun–Light of the world, no less!–opens our eyes to see. We come to “see” a man we’ve never actually laid eyes on. In fact, we not only see him, but we love him, trust him, and delight in him (1 Peter 1:8). Along the way he teaches us to see everything else the world contains. We aren’t talking about retinal images processed in the brain. This seeing, this gaze, means to wake us up from our fantasies, fictions, and nightmares to see things as they are in fact. God has the real take on things. And God teaches us his gaze.

We learn (slowly! in fits and starts!) to see how God sees. God, self, others, problems, circumstances, all now appear in the true mirror. Learning the gaze of God, we come to weigh life aright. We discern good and evil, fair and foul, lovely and degraded. Our Father enlightens the eyes of our hearts. We become able to pry apart true from false, instead of living in a murk of half-truths and flat lies.